Wednesday, April 03, 2013

My dilemma is the dilemma of man from the beginning of time; the conflict is what I should be doing versus what I would rather do.  This is the basis of religion, of success in school, of happiness in family, in proper education of children, and in success in life overall.  In religion, we speak of our obedience to God and in the Judeo-Christian tradition, putting God and our fellow man ahead of ourselves.  This is a workable definition of what we should do.  What we want to do is to please ourselves; we want to put our own desires above those of God and of our fellow man.  This hostility, read enmity, toward the commandments of God is called pride, and we might define our achievement on earth as the eventual submission of our will to God’s will, of eliminating pride in favor of charity.  Forever, but in my memory since the 60s, the mantra has been, “If it feels good, do it”.  That is a pretty succinct statement of the trial of mortality: the advocacy of putting off our higher purpose to settle for the immediate gratification of a lower one.  And how does that relate to me sitting here typing away on the computer in favor of going out to organize my world, clear melting snow off my driveway, clean out a winters accumulation from my garage, water my plants, do the laundry, etc.  The siren song of the keyboard and monitor call me away from taking advantage of a beautiful day to be productive.  Productivity at time sounds like an evil word, but in the end, all those productively spent moments add up to success in school and job and life. Obsessively producing is not our end goal, but accomplishing worthwhile things is.  On our own we must each decide what is or is not worthwhile, and what is or is not wasting one of the most precious gifts that God did give us: time.  I could tie all that back to charity versus pride and God’s will versus man’s carnal desires, but I trust that if you think about how this applies in the world we live in, you will see that love for others, unselfishness and charity bring happiness and peace and how selfishness brings hate and destruction and war.  I need to go move the snow.